Duck Sausages, Hunter’s Style

When life gives you lots of ducks or geese (this happens a lot with snow goose hunters), you should make some sausages out of them. Use the shot-up birds you won’t feel bad about cutting up; save the perfect birds for roasting or other uses.

Other than snow geese, Canada geese, spoonies, diver or sea ducks are excellent candidates for sausage. I wouldn’t do this with nice pintails, mallards or wood ducks, though.

This sausage is “hunter’s style,” which to me means coarse-grained and flavored with traditional European game spices, such as caraway, juniper and sage. This duck sausage has all three, with sage as its main herb.

Juniper and caraway can sometimes be hard to find, although every major supermarket I’ve every been to has at least caraway. Juniper can be tougher to source, but if you live in the West there are a lot of wild species of juniper; the best is Juniperus communis. In the East, look for the blue berries on Eastern Red Cedar, Juniperus virginiana. You can buy juniper in fancy supermarkets, in places like Cost Plus World Market, and online through places like Penzey’s.

Duck Sausages, Hunter's Style

These sausages would be perfect with a cassoulet, with beans, or simply pan-roasted or grilled and served on a roll with some mustard and sauerkraut or onions. The possibilities are unlimited. Note that the only ingredient measured in grams is the salt -- it is that important to get the saltiness right. I did include a rougher measurement to get you close, if you don't have a scale. I like to use a dark, malty beer here, but red wine or even gin is a good alternative. A German dunkelweiss is my beer of choice, followed by a porter or Scottish ale. If you are averse to alcohol, use ice water.

Instructions

Get out about 15 feet of hog casings and soak them in warm water. If you don’t trust your source, run water through them to check for punctures or weak spots.

Make sure all your equipment is cold; freeze your grinder’s grinding plate and blades, and the bowl you will put the meat into for 30 minutes to an hour. Do the same for the meat and fat. When everything’s nice and cold, mix the meat and fat with the salt and all the dry spices.

Grind it all through a very coarse plate; I use a 10 mm plate. Test the temperature of the mixture, and if it’s 35°F or colder, go ahead and grind it all again through a coarser die, like a 6 mm or thereabouts. If it’s warmer, put the mix back in the freezer to chill until it hits 35°F or cooler. (if you don't have a very coarse plate, grind half the mixture a second time through the finer, typically 4.5 mm plate. It's important to grind the meat twice.)

Once the sausage has been ground twice, test the temperature again to make sure it’s cold. I prefer to chill the mix down to 28°F to 32°F for this next stage. Chill the mix and when it’s cold enough, take it out and add the beer and water. Now, mix and knead the mixture in a big bin or bowl with your hands for a solid 2 minutes — your hands will ache with cold, which is good. You want everything to almost emulsify.

Stuff the sausage into the casings rather loosely into a continuous coil. When you're done, it's time to make links. I like my sausages to be about 6 to 8 inches long, but it’s your choice. To twist them into links, tie off one end of the coil you just made. Pinch off links with your two hands and roll the link between them forward a couple times. Move down the coil and repeat, only this time roll backwards a few times. Repeat until you do the whole coil. Now look at the links, which will probably have air pockets in them. Use a sterile needle or sausage pricker (set it aglow in your stovetop flame) to puncture the casing over all the air pockets. Gently compress the links together to squeeze out the air pockets and rotate the links a bit more to tighten; this takes practice.

Hang your links for at least 1 hour if your room is warm, and up to overnight if you can hang them in a place that’s 40°F or cooler. Don’t let them freeze yet. If you are not hanging overnight, let the sausages continue to dry uncovered in the fridge overnight before you seal them up and freeze. These sausages will keep a week in the fridge and a year in the freezer, if you have vacuum-sealed them.

Notes

One way to get a tighter bind on the sausage is cut the meat and fat into chunks that will fit into your grinder, toss them with the salt, then do the first grind. Now let this rest in your fridge overnight. This helps develop myosin, which binds the sausage together. I always do this step, but it's not strictly necessary.

Hank Shaw

Hey there. Welcome to Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, the internet's largest source of recipes and know-how for wild foods. I am a chef, author, and yes, hunter, angler, gardener, forager and cook. Follow me on Instagram and on Facebook.

Thanks Hank! I’ve made it a few times with mallard and keep evolving the spices while keeping the technique the same. My family is very happy with the duck sausage. One of your books is on my Gift list now.

We’re going to be butchering our super fatty domestic ducks this weekend and plan on making this recipe (with apple brandy). Since our ducks have so much fat on them, do we also need to add the fatty pork? Thanks!

Amazing recipe. First time trying duck sausage. I only had mallards so I breasted and skinned them. Sausage tastes awesome. The pork gives it the texture and body of regular sausage while the duck provides the gamey flavor and some tenderness. Ended up being a little short on casing so I made some patties with the ground meat. That also turned out great. I will have a hard time wanting to cook my ducks any other way. Con: It’s a huge mess.

Hello Hank, two quick questions for you. First, do you like the meat chilled for sanitary reasons, or is it just easier to work with? Second, could I sous vide before freezing to use as a fully cooked sausage? Thanks for another great recipe!

Bryce: The meat needs to be chilled for sanitary reasons, but moreso to avoid “smear,” which is where the fat in the mix partially melts and smears over the meat in the mix. This destroys the bind you need for a good sausage.

I had some shovelers last year that were far too gamey for my taste, even after a rice heavy diet. And even mallard is a little gamey for my wife’s taste. I had a few other hunters recommend a soak in buttermilk or brine to draw out some of the blood/iron from the meat, which reduces the gamey flavor. Most of what I will be shooting this weekend will be mallards, gadwalls, teal, and maybe woodies.

Hello, I am interested in trying this recipe, but have a question regarding “bleeding” the duck meat a bit before processing into sausage. I have heard buttermilk takes some of the gamey flavor out; could the duck be soaked in buttermilk before proceeding with this recipe? Or would the buttermilk spoil somehow in the sausage. Alternatively, if I wanted to soak the duck meat in saltwater before hand, how should I adjust the salt in the recipe?

Chris: Seriously? You thought 34 grams was too much salt for 5 pounds of sausage? (It’s not 3.5, as you mention in your note. You need to factor in the fat.) Interesting. You must be very, very sensitive to salt, as this is only 1.5 percent salt by weight. Don’t halve the salt next time. Don’t drop it lower than 22 grams, which is about 1 percent salt.

I made this recipe and replaced the duck with pheasant from this past fall. I added the optional chinese five spice powder and it was a little overpowering for my taste. I would opt to leave it out next time, but that is just personal preference.

Hello! My son is allergic to beef and pork so we started raising our own meat chickens, turkeys, quail, and just added some ducks to our flock. I’d love to try this recipe but is there any way I could substitute the pork fat for some other fat that is safe for my sonA, duck fat maybe?

Hi great post here. The art of making food from scratch appeals to me and I hope to try out this recipe. Can I use my mum’s trusty old manual meat mincer? It seems to be the same thing with what Americans call meat grinder.

Bought the book and made this sausage without the casing. I rolled it into 1/2″ mini meatballs, browned them, and added to a soup I made with pesto tortellini, chicken broth and spinach. It was AWESOME!!!! Made another batch the next weekend it was so good.

Really excited to try this. Would there be any alterations to the recipie if I used muscovy ducks? We have a few that are headed to freezer camp this weekend and this seems like a good sausauge to do with them.

I made this over the weekend and finally ate some up tonight (besides extra filling tossed in a pan during the stuffing process!). Pan seared the sausages, and tossed some sauerkraut in the pan at the end to deglaze a little. Probably the best way I’ve eaten black duck!

One question. The birds I used had been brined before I froze them months ago. I didn’t consider this, used the 34g salt to 5 lbs meat, and the sausage came out a little salty. Just use less salt next time?